


Pain

by strawberryflavoring



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sokka is really just stupid and doesn't realize he's bi until its glaringly obvious, everyone is chill about lgbt stuff except fire nation and some earth kingdom bastards, pain soulmate au, zukka will be canon and if not i will merc dimartino myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24815800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryflavoring/pseuds/strawberryflavoring
Summary: Sokka and Zuko are soulmates, and in this AU you feel any pain that your soulmate feels (no scars or actual injuries from the bond though).This soulmate AU seems like it was made for Zuko but I hadn't seen one so I figured I'd fill the void. I have no clue where this is going so PLEASE check tags with each update! Also lmk if i forgot a tag :^]
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 399





	Pain

Sokka was a rough kid. Part of growing up in the Southern Water Tribe was constant roughhousing, because how else were all these boys going to become great warriors? Plus, it had the added benefit of revealing soulbonds pretty early on. Girls would sit and watch the boys roughhousing, and when they felt a throbbing pain in the same spot they just saw another little boy get punched in, they’d know. Playful fighting was important, not just for training, but for finding the person destined to share their life with you.

For this reason, Sokka got in a lot of fights as a kid. Nothing serious, but he wanted to make it as easy as possible for his soulmate to find out who he was. Starting shit with his friends or asking them to spar so he could ‘test out some new killer moves’ was most of his childhood. He felt a little guilty for making his soulmate, whoever she was, feel so much pain. But he figured the more obvious he was, the faster he would find her. He had really hoped it was Liuna… she reminded him of the full moon.

  
But it never happened. None of the girls ever came to him, blushing, with a shy confession that Sokka was the one. Everyone had paired off after a few years, except Sokka and his sister. He realized that his soulmate, whoever she was, wasn’t in the Southern Water tribe.

  
Both him and his sister were in shitty situations in regards to their soulmates. Yeah, Sokka thought he had it bad, but Katara had literally never felt any soul pains in her life; not a pinprick. There was no easy answer to her problem; everyone had a soulmate, and the gods had never before been so cruel as to take away someone’s other half. So, Sokka and Katara were the two sad sacks of the village; alone, unmatched, and destined to love outside their already dwindling community.

  
While Sokka was happy to know that he at least had a soulmate, there were a lot of pieces of the puzzle that had him worried. Whoever his partner was, she didn’t get hurt very often. For weeks and months Sokka wouldn’t feel anything at all, but one random day Sokka would feel some of the worst pain he had ever felt in his life. A slap to the face, kick to the stomach, the feeling of his back slamming against a hard surface or hands squeezing his throat; Sokka had felt all these things. This kind of physical violence was totally out of his wheelhouse. None of his friends had done that to him, even in the worst fights he’d ever had.

  
Because Sokka wanted to be a manly-man, he normally ran off when the pain started and cried alone until it subsided; didn’t want to ruin his image. But one night, when he was still young, he woke up in the night with another horrible sucker punch to the gut and started screaming from the shock and pain. His father, Hakoda, got up and ran to his side in an instant.  
“Sokka! What’s going on?” Hakoda said, worry etched on his face in a way he’d never seen before. He cradled Sokka’s head in his hand and leaned over him, looking all over to find the source of the pain. Sokka came to and realized what was happening, and he was able to gasp out what little he knew.

  
“Soul… pains.... ugh.” After he said this, he flopped down into bed and closed his eyes, but still addressed his father.

  
“Dad, I feel stuff like this all the time. These really horrible pains, like I’m getting hit by someone who really wants my soulmate to hurt... to make her cry and be afraid. Who would do this to someone? Why is my soulmate getting hurt like this? I just.... I just want it to stop so I can help her.”

  
Hakoda stared at his son, grief washing over his face to replace the worry. He raised his hand from the nape of Sokka’s neck to his cheek, a rare moment between these two. Sokka would probably never let him do this otherwise.

  
“Sokka… your soulmate is going through a very rough time. I love you more than anything, and you know that you and Katara are my entire world. Everyone in the village loves and cherishes you two, because we have a strong and beautiful tribe. But some people are not so lucky.” Hakoda closed his eyes and gulped, trying to gain the strength to tell his young son about the cruelties of the world. “Not all people love their children. Whoever cares for your soulmate… might be hurting them. Or their parents are powerless to stop the abuse. I am so sorry, my son.” Hakoda hugged Sokka tightly, and both men shed a tear. Katara silently joined their hug too after a while, and the family grieved for a person they never knew.

  
From then on, Sokka never roughhoused again. His soulmate didn’t deserve any more pain than she already had to deal with. He would occasionally pinch himself, just so whoever it was didn’t get worried that Sokka had died or something, but besides that he tried to stay out of violence as much as he could.

  
His warrior skills suffered, but to compensate he became the motherfucking boomerang master. He could snipe an albatrossbear from 150 ft away. He hoped that one day he could tell his soulmate all about how, because of their soulbond, Sokka became the most legendary boomerang-thrower of all fucking time!

  
The soul pains got more frequent as he aged, but he learned to cope with the suddenness. The worry was harder to deal with, but he knew one day he would do his best to heal every slight against this poor girl. He was probably going to boomerang to death whoever in Tui’s name would treat someone so horribly. No matter what his soulmate had done, there was no way she deserved all the abuse she had experienced in her life.

-

Years later, his father and all his friends went off to fight the fire nation. Sokka, as the chief’s son, was left to watch over the tribe. It hurt more than he wanted to admit to be left alone, like somehow he was too weak to fight, despite all his friends getting to go anyway. But his father had entrusted him to watch over the women and children left at the south pole, so he did.  
And then, the second worst day of his life happened, only beat out by the day his mother was murdered. Sokka was fishing in the ice flows, waiting with his chin in his hand for literally anything to pull on the line. And all at once, Sokka felt pain unlike anything he could have imagined.

  
He fucking screamed. Alone on the waters, the air was ripped out of his lungs and he let out the most blood-curdling yell he’d ever heard. The left side of his face felt an indescribable heat, blasting relentlessly against his eye, cheek, and ear. He could feel his own flesh bubbling and melting on his own body like the meats he fried for dinner. And just like that, Sokka collapsed backwards into the boat and blacked out. He came to two days later; Katara found him on the ice and thought he’d died.

  
That pain lasted for months. Even though Sokka had no physical injuries, he kept bandages over his left eye because the constant throbbing and aching were easier to ignore if his eye was covered. The only solace he took from this horrible fucking ache was that his soulmate must be the strongest woman on the planet if she survived that. Sometimes, when his mind would fill with rage, sadness, or guilt over his inability to help, he took solace in knowing that despite everything, his soulmate was living and breathing. Through all that hell she was still here on Earth, fighting to live.

  
Sokka tried to approach it with humor like he did most things. It made it all a little easier.

  
“Fuck the fire nation! Seriously, fuck the fire nation, fuck fire benders, and fuck fire in general!” he said to himself during boomerang practice. “Who burns a girl like that, when they aren’t even fighting! It came out of nowhere, like some vindictive motherfucker just wanted, just wanted to hurt, like they always do. Hurting my… my partner. What an absolute piece of human garbage. Or is that an insult to garbage? Huh? What do you think?” he turned to his right and stared a dogseal in its glassy black eyes. The seal tilted its head but otherwise did nothing. “Can’t wait to show that stupid asshole my legendary boomerang skills. Hope I get to boomerang their nuts clean off.”

  
As if on queue, Sokka raised his left hand and caught the boomerang he’d thrown and put it back in its sleeve. He stared down at his shoes and tried not to let the emotional pain he felt deep in his chest burn him inside out.


End file.
